To date, many media editing applications exist for creating media presentations by compositing several pieces of media content such as video, audio, animation, still image, etc. Such applications give users the ability to edit, combine, transition, overlay, and piece together different media content in a variety of manners to create a resulting composite presentation. Examples of media editing applications include Final Cut Pro® and iMovie®, both sold by Apple Inc.
Some media editing applications provide bins or folder-like structures to organize media content. In these applications, a user typically imports media content and creates several bins. The user then provides names for the bins and organizes the content by moving different pieces of the content into these bins. In other words, the user clears one or more areas that contain pieces of the content by placing the pieces in other areas where he or she can easily access them later. When a user needs a piece of content, the user searches for it in one of the bins. For instance, a video editor might search a bin called “People” in order to find a video clip having a wide camera shot of a group of extras. After finding the video clip, the video editor may move or copy the video clip into another bin. If the video editor cannot locate the video clip, the editor may import the clip again.
In addition to bins, some media editing applications provide keyword-tagging functionality. With keyword tagging, a user selects one or more pieces of content and associates the selected content with a keyword. Typically, the user associates the selected content through a keyword display area that lists several user-specified keywords. To make use of the keyword association, the user initiates a keyword filtering operation on a particular keyword in order to display only those pieces of content that have been associated with the particular keyword.
There are a number of shortcomings associated with the organization approaches mentioned above. For example, with bin organization, a user must search through different bins to find the right pieces of content. In addition, the user must move or copy the pieces of content in between different bins to organize them.
With keyword tagging, a user is limited to filtering down a display area to find content associated with a particular keyword. In some cases, the user has no recollection of which pieces of content are associated with which keywords. Furthermore, in most cases, an application's keyword tagging functionality is a secondary organizational feature to supplement folder-type organization.